Sooner or Later Every Story Ends
by voodoobuddha
Summary: What happens when Duncan isn't there to save them? Rated M- Dark. Very Dark. Rape, character death, madness, etc...
1. Human Noble-Elissa Cousland

Disclaimer- All hail Bioware!

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**Human Noble-Elissa Cousland**

Her mother tells her to run so she runs. She runs through the dank, musty tunnels beneath her home, through the fields beyond and the woods beyond those. She runs through the stitch that develops in her side, through the burning of her lungs and the tears that blind her. She runs through the rest of the night and the morning that follows only, finally, collapsing with the sun high in the sky thanks to a tree root she hadn't seen.

She falls to the ground on her hands and knees. Some distant, quiet part of her knows that she's skinned her palms badly, that she'll be next to useless with her bow. The part of her that sees the blood running down her wrists and fingers and remembers is so much louder, so much stronger, it drags her back to the castle and she isn't seeing her own blood anymore but Oren's. Sweet little Oren who'll never know so many of the joys of life because Howe's men have left him in a pool of blood.

Elissa hasn't stopped crying since she fled but now she wails until her throat is raw, salty tears falling on flesh-stripped hands, stinging wounds she's too far gone to even feel.

She falls asleep right there on the cold ground, abused hands curled lightly against her breast, shoulders shaking as she sobs and dreams of a castle where the betrayed dead roam.

It's dark when she wakes again, Rabbit licking away the tears that wet her cheeks. She scrambles up on unsteady legs with her mabari's help and scans the stars to get her bearing. She needs to head south. To Ostagar. To the King. To Fergus.

She barely sleeps as she travels, her dreams haunted, only stopping to drink from a stream or eat berries from a bush or when Rabbit's exhausted whines bring her to the knife's edge of violence against him. She won't hit him, not ever, but she comes close those first few days, the high pitched squeal of his dog's voice grating against her already raw nerves.

They're both pounds away from being who they were when they reach the Southern Imperial Highway. What were once well-fitted leathers hang off of Elissa's shoulders like Rabbit's skin hangs off his. They're weak and tired so it's really no surprise at how easily the darkspawn take them down.

To the dog they're merciful; an arrow through his heart and lungs. He dies with a whimper. Elissa gets a poisoned arrow to the chest that pierces her armor and shatters her collar bone, but she lives.

They came at her from the shadows, surround and lift her up and carry her off into the boggy marsh that is the Korcari Wilds. They smell worse than the rotten meat that they shove down her throat and she's too weak to put up much of a fight as they rape her again and again in the dark hole they've brought her to.

As she grows and changes under their ministrations she's relieved to find she can no longer touch her grief through the beautiful music in her mind.


	2. Human Mage-Daylen Amell

Disclaimer- All hail Bioware!

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**Human Mage-Daylen Amell**

When they come up from the repository to find both the First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander waiting for them, Daylen's heart sinks to the pits of his stomach. Even so he remains smiling, more than ready to lie and joke and excuse their actions as three people seeking a quiet place for an innocent celebratory threesome. If they buy that Lily will be transferred, he'll be punished, and Jowan... Well, Jowan will probably still be made tranquil but two out of three isn't bad odds.

Jowan beats him to the lie with blood and truth.

With Aeonar in his immediate future and the chains that bind his life drawing tighter, Daylen lets free his tongue. As every horrible, ridiculous, and insulting thing he has ever thought about the Knight-Commander's parentage spills from his mouth he realizes he has only one real regret; that he hadn't known before hand how this would turn out. He might have taken the time write down and recite his insults in the form of rhyming couplets.

It doesn't take long before Greagoir backhands him across the face, his steel gauntlet breaking one of Daylen's teeth. With a grin, he maneuvers the piece of tooth onto his tongue and spits it at Greagoir. The little spot of blood and saliva that gleams on the Knight-Commander's cheek gives Daylen a perverse sense pleasure even as he's struck again.

Aeonar is far far worse than he ever imagined, but if there's one thing Daylen prides himself on it's his ability to force light into the darkness. So he jokes and laughs and intentionally irritates the templar guards who shove him through the prison doors and into a cramped cell. He laughs and jokes and plays at madness until they stop feeding him in an attempt to make him stop. He jokes around bites of raw rat when the templars come to see why he hasn't starved to death and he laughs at the demons who permeate his dreams.

Ten years later as the veil rips open all across the face of Thedas making Aeonar less than special, he laughs even louder. He'd stopped toeing the edge of insanity years before and jumped straight in.


End file.
